John Roberts (martyr)

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John Roberts (martyr) : biography

– 10 December 1610

The choral piece, "Beatus Juan de Mervinia" in both Latin and Welsh, was specially commissioned for the service from the Welsh composer Brian Hughes.

Benedictine missionary

The following year Roberts left the college for the Abbey of St. Benedict, Valladolid, and from there he was sent to make his novitiate at San Martín Pinario, Santiago de Compostela, where he made his profession towards the end of 1600. Having completed his studies he was ordained, and set out for England on 26 December 1602. Although observed by a Government spy, Roberts and his companions succeeded in entering the country in April 1603, where he was appointed vicar of the English monks of the Spanish Congregation on the Mission. He was arrested and banished on 13 May.

He reached Douai, in northern France, on 24 May. Soon he managed to return to England; he worked among the plague victims in London. In 1604, while embarking for Spain with four postulants, including William Scott (later known as Maurus Scott) he was again arrested. Not recognized as a priest, he was released and again banished, but he returned to England at once.

On 5 November 1605, while Justice Grange was searching the house of Mrs. Percy, first wife of Thomas Percy, who was involved in the Gunpowder Plot, he found Roberts there and arrested him. Though acquitted of any complicity in the plot itself, Roberts was imprisoned in the Gatehouse Prison at Westminster for seven months and then exiled again in July, 1606.

Foundation of St. Gregory’s monastery, Douai, France

This time he was absent for some fourteen months, nearly all of which he spent at Douai where he founded and became the first prior of a house for the English Benedictine monks who had entered various Spanish monasteries. This was the beginning of the monastery of St. Gregory’s at Douai. This community of monks was banished from France in 1795 at the French Revolution and travelled to England where they settled at Downside Abbey, Bath, Somerset in 1814.